Shattered Review

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(More customer reviews)Please keep in mind that I am one of a handful of people that saw this film ON THE BIG SCREEN IN A MOVIE THEATER instead of just on TNT, butchered for television, with commercial interruptions. It is much better the way it was intended to be seen. After seeing the film twice ON THE BIG SCREEN during its limited release, these are my comments:
Imagine a Yuppie Gerard Butler. Great looking. Confident. Successful. Gorgeous wife. Beautiful sweet daughter. The perfect life in upscale suburban Chicago. Enter mysterious menacing stalking stranger and their worst nightmare begins. He threatens the life of their daughter as insurance for their obedience to his demands.
Sound like the typical 'kidnapped kid' flick? It's not.
It's taut, suspenseful, edge of your seat storytelling combined with good solid performances by all, especially Bello and Brosnan. Butler is very good, but I've seen him better. I believe he filmed this on the heels of the grueling demands of 300 and it shows a bit. He may not be at the very top of his game here, but he still performs well.
Brosnan upped his credibility as an actor for me in this film. He played the menacing stranger perfectly. Just the right tone of voice and facial expressions, joined with his eyes and body language, spoke in unison to perfection in every scene. I'd really like to see more from him, he is a very good dramatic actor. I like him better as an older, mature man. More gritty, less suave.
Maria Bello is perfect as the mother held hostage by mother love and the need to protect her child at all costs.
I loved the score. Where you might expect a really intense, gritty score, this one opts for a quieter one with a hint of bluesy undertones and it works. It intensifies at the right moments, but never takes a front seat as often happens in thrillers. It melds with the action and helps makes each scene into an audiovisual, emotional emulsion.
In fact, the whole film is just quieter than one would expect, given what is usually served up with films of this genre. There are no car chases, no last minute rescues, no heroes. It never goes over the top. It has its feet on the ground and its eyes on what's human and real.
This film is no dud. Even though it had a very limited release, it is not the fault of the filmmakers or the actors. It is good movie-making. You may not think it's one of the best films you've ever seen, but there's a good chance you'll be satisfied that you got your money's worth. I give it a definite thumbs up.
Scale of 1-10? I give this an 8.
Warning: DON'T read much about this film. DON'T watch the trailer over and over. The less you know going in, the better your experience of it will be. Because of one seemingly innocuous remark made by someone who'd seen it, I guessed the ending about halfway through. I wasn't even trying. But things we hear stick in our minds whether we like it or not. I sincerely wish I had not guessed correctly. The rest of the film lost it's suspense for me.
Hint: This is a two timer. It's even better the second time.

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SHATTERED - DVD Movie

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P.S. I Love You (2007) Review

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(More customer reviews)Marketing P.S. I LOVE YOU was a hit/miss situation. The general trailer and the billboards seem to set the audience up for a sappy tearjerker. But happily what happens in this film is not the expected 'widowed person communicating with the dead love out of failure to get on with life' tale, but instead a look into the importance of friendship, family, and adjusting to the incomparable loss. Credit the original novel by Cecelia Ahern as adapted for the screen by Steven Rogers writer/director Richard LaGravenese for making what so easily have been a sappy, maudlin, whining tale into a touching one of human emotions with a sense of reality mixed with a mildly implausible situation, and a series of character studies that emphasize the importance of support in the time of grief.
Holly (Hilary Swank) and Gerry (Gerard Butler) Kennedy are a married couple with goals and frustrations and a huge dollop of passionate love, surrounded by friends and family. The tragedy happens just as the movie starts: Gerry has died of a brain tumor leaving the copeless Holly alone with her memories and self-inflicted regrets. But Gerry, knowing he was a terminal patient, devised his own plan to help Holly through that first year of grief: he left letters in various forms and places, advising Holly how to learn about his family and how to get on with life. Holly's mother (Kathy Bates) owns a bar and has supported her little family since Holly's father deserted his family years ago. In the bar is another injured soul named Daniel (Harry Connick Jr.) who fancies Holly but realizes she is far from ready to think about dating. Holly's friends Denise (Lisa Kudrow) and Sharon (Gina Gershon) accompany Holly to Gerry's pre-planned trip to his home in Ireland to meet the in-laws Holly never knew. While in Ireland Holly reminisces on the magic of first meeting Gerry, meets Gerry's parents as well as Gerry's best friend William (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and through it all manages to appreciate the gift of PS I Love You letters and reminders Gerry has left for her. And she ultimately finds closure to her loss.
The cast is strong and makes these at times strained characters into lovable people: Hilary Swank has made a successful entrance into the feminine lead role and is balanced to perfection by Butler, Morgan, Connick, Bates, Kudrow and Gershon. They make the implausible plausible and deliver a love story that goes beyond the level of superficial to join the ranks of warm and tender memorable slices of life. It is surprisingly good! Grady Harp, May 08

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Buy a new outfit. Be a disco diva. Learn to fish. Take a chance. Travel. Laugh. Love. Sometimes all you need to start really living is a little shove in the right direction – and that’s just what Holly Kennedy gets. From the handsome, big-hearted love of her life. From a series of mysterious letters. And from gal pals who know that a friend in need is a friend in need of some laughs! Based on Cecelia Ahern’s joyful bestseller and boasting a top cast led by two-time Academy Award® winner* Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler (300), P.S. I Love You is your very own message full of fun, love, triumph and romance. Open it now. (P.S. You’ll love it!)

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The Ugly Truth (Widescreen Edition) (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)"The Ugly Truth" represents something I never thought I'd see: A romantic comedy that both women and men will appreciate. Granted, it probably won't be for the same reasons. Women will like it because underneath it all, it's a fairly typical romantic comedy, the story of Girl Hates Boy, Boy Hates Girl, Boy and Girl Fall in Love Anyway. Men will like it because one of the main characters expresses much of what they think and feel on a daily basis. Everyone will like it because the story is engaging and the characters are not mere cardboard caricatures. You can actually invest in them, and you're able to care about what's going on. What could easily have been a routine date night movie is instead a surprisingly good movie that need not wait until date night. It's also genuinely funny--a bit raunchy, yes, but funny just the same.
Much of the film's success is due to the wonderful onscreen chemistry between Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler. They continuously make us laugh, yet the comedy is not so broad that you can't believe them in their roles. They make a point of interacting with one another, not as comic relief but as real people. Heigl plays Abby Richter, the romantically challenged, neurotic, controlling producer of a failing Sacramento morning talk show. Butler plays Mike Chadaway, the chauvinistic host of a public access relationship program called "The Ugly Truth." He's unapologetically tell-it-like-it-is in matters of men and women. There's no such thing, he claims, as a sensitive, nurturing man who wants to connect at an emotional level. Men just want sex, plain and simple. And they only want it with attractive women.
Abby, who thinks Mike's rhetoric is appalling, is horrified when she learns that he has been hired to her station in an effort to boost ratings. They clash at every turn ... until he learns that she's interested in dating her next door neighbor--an orthopedic surgeon named Colin (Eric Winter) who just happens to be incredibly handsome. Sensing she's doing everything wrong to initiate a relationship, Mike offers to help Abby by having her test his relationships theories on Colin. She reluctantly agrees, and sure enough, Mike's methods work wonders. She dresses more provocatively. She learns to stop being critical and avoid discussing her personal problems. She learns to be the embodiment of both the saint and the sinner, or as Mike puts it, "The librarian and the stripper."
And that's when things start to get more complex. Abby is succeeding with Colin, but only at the expense of not being herself. On the other hand, could anyone love her as herself? She is, after all, known for bringing background checks and printed topics of conversation to blind dates. As for Mike, he has very definite reasons for believing that loving relationships are a sham. They're gradually revealed not only through carefully structured scenes, but also through Butler, who shows he can find the right balance between smug and sensitive. We see that Mike is the closest thing his young nephew has for a father, and even though he playfully gives the boy relationship advice, he's also quick to remind him that kids should never, ever watch his show.
Heigl also manages a balancing act with her performance, specifically between strength and vulnerability. Abby overachieves at work to compensate for a lack of a love life, which initially seems funny but steadily grows desperate. For reasons she doesn't care to admit to, she's falling in love with Mike, and he too is falling in love with her. But what about Colin? Is he with Abby only because of the façade Mike told her to put up? There's a scene between her and Colin late in the film that directly addresses this issue, and to my delight, it's handled in a way that avoids just about everything that would happen in the average romantic comedy. There are no shouting matches. There are no flying fists. There are no confrontations. There's only a quiet moment of realization that the truth is indeed ugly.
Scenes like these are wonderfully juxtaposed with moments of well written comedy. There are some very amusing moments between Cheryl Hines and John Michael Higgins as unhappily married news anchors who share the same desk and time slot. The film's single funniest scene takes place in a restaurant and involves Abby, an extremely stimulating pair of underwear, and a control device that ends up in the wrong hands.
I can say with complete honesty (and some embarrassment) that I wasn't expecting such a strong film. I certainly wasn't expecting a strong film belonging to this particular genre. What floors me is that two of the three writers of this film are Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith. There are the same two that brought us "The House Bunny," one of the worst films of 2008. They certainly got it right this time around. "The Ugly Truth" is one of the best romantic comedies I've seen in a long time, a delightful and absorbing tale about the fronts people display. It's funny without lowering itself to the level of cheap gags, and this is in spite of the film's well-deserved R rating. Heigl and Butler convincingly pull off a romance, no small feat given the contrived nature of these kinds of films. At last, a date movie both the man and the woman can enjoy.

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Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler star in this wildly funny battle of the sexes. Abby (Heigl), a successful morning show producer, is looking for a lot in a man. Mike (Butler), her obnoxious TV star, knows men only want one thing. Determined to prove that she's not romantically challenged, Abby takes Mike's advice during a promising new romance, but the unexpected results will stun everyone.

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Gamer (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)Dear Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor,
We appreciate your recent attempt to create a movie that would appeal to gamers by naming it after us. Really, we do. But now that we've stopped throwing up from all the motion sickness and our pupils have finally refocused from the flash cuts, we thought you might appreciate some tips to help you farm XP faster.
* Stop with the static: Seriously guys. Stop it. Apparently in your version of the future all video games have terrible reception. We have lag, we have crashes, we have all kinds of problems, but the one problem we do not have is static. That's because our video games are not television screens. You'll also notice that our television do not have static either, and haven't had static for about a decade since they invented this thing called cable. Look it up.
* Speaking of Kable: Cable is the name of a time-traveling cyborg in the Marvel Universe. Kable is the name somebody thinks gamers think is cool. Nobody thinks Kable is cool. Nobody believes Kable is the best killer in the gaming universe. You didn't even use 133t speak, so...fail.
* Making Michael C. Hall an evil genius is...a stroke of genius. Go Dexter!
* Stop with the red/blue colors: Ludacris is cool and all, but even his cyber cred is sorely tested by a blurry 3-D image on screen.
* The teabagging gag was funny.
* Your jump cuts suck: We notice when you replace rapid jump cuts with actual fight choreography. It's the movie equivalent of shouting and pointing, "LOOK! A KITTY!" every time a fight starts. You just look stupid and we feel embarrassed for you.
* Dancing convicts are hilarious. Convicts dancing to a Frank Sinatra song is vaguely creepy. But still hilarious.
* Why is there still lag in the future? Bad guys can control other human beings by changing their brain cells into [INSERT STUPID MADE UP NAME] but we haven't solved lag? Is this future made of stupid?
* Evil Villain Tip #58: Next time around, you might want to consider not making the guy who holds your deepest, darkest secret an international broadcast superstar.
* Don't insult us: No offense, but portraying the gaming universe as nothing but "deviants and murderers" doesn't really make us want to watch your movie. Yes, the Internet has a dark side. But since you called the movie "Gamer" and not "All Gamers Are Disgusting Fat Perverted Slobs Who Watch Porn All Day," we'll assume you actually want us to buy a ticket. Please consider this the next time you name a movie after us.
And finally...
* Thank you for killing John Leguizamo: That's not a tip. But thank you.
We hope that these tips prove useful the next time you level up as directors and writers. Incidentally, multiclassing as both might not be such a good idea.

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Gerard Butler stars as Kable, condemned criminal and globally famous super-soldier in the ultimate multiplayer game, "Slayers.” Human controllers direct each thought and move of real-life prison inmates battling in hyper-intense environments – where the goal is freedom and the penalty is death. But when Kable suddenly decides he wants out, his rebellion threatens the twisted plans of game creator Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall, TV’s "Dexter”), who will stop at nothing to crush the renegade commando in this taut, adrenaline-packed action-thriller.

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